workflow mcdx mxcd Mathcad 15 -> PRIME 2.0

[Efried]

Helo,

could you give me please some hurdles to expect when moving an worksheet to PRIME?

my first problems were:

- true and false lacking - no global definitions anymore, was converting only units

- lacking *.txt import component- had to convert into xslx

- no trace command in code blocks

deleting lines in programms does work different - also the flickering and blocked worksheet (quite for some time) raised my frustration...

[Werner_E]

Prime 0.2 (as I use to call it) lacks a lot of features we are used from Mathcad 15. I have great problems in the very slow reaction of the interface and most of the times can't see what part of an expression is selected - kind of trial and error and costs a lot of time. Also many things are only doable by going to the menu continually, sometimes with changes of ribbons - very timeconsuming.

As for the conversion of worksheets you may be interested in that small collection of what others have experienced in doing the job at the end of that website: http://plasma.colorado.edu/mathcad/index.html

[RichardJ]

As for the conversion of worksheets you may be interested in that small collection of what others have experienced in doing the job at the end of that website: http://plasma.colorado.edu/mathcad/index.html

This statement: "Once the 30-day trial period expires, you lose the ability to use the old Mathcad and can only use Prime from that point forward." is not correct. Before you install the 30 day trial make sure you have a backup of your current license file. Even if you don't have a copy, I'm sure PTC would fix the licensing problem if you explained what happened.

[Werner_E]

Richard Jackson schrieb:

As for the conversion of worksheets you may be interested in that small collection of what others have experienced in doing the job at the end of that website: http://plasma.colorado.edu/mathcad/index.html

This statement: "Once the 30-day trial period expires, you lose the ability to use the old Mathcad and can only use Prime from that point forward." is not correct. Before you install the 30 day trial make sure you have a backup of your current license file. Even if you don't have a copy, I'm sure PTC would fix the licensing problem if you explained what happened.

I didn't cought that. While you are right in what you say about backing up the old license file and of course not loosing the right to use your older version of Mathcad.

But the whole procedure shows a big problem I had never thought of, as I have a license for the latest versions. If someone sticked with MC14, does testdrive Prime and wants to see what his old sheets would look like in the new version, he will get his version 14 uninstalled and chances are he would forget to backup his license. And even if he did he would be forced to go through all the hassle of uninstalling MC15 and reinstalling MC14 again. And all that just to look if the new version would be worth while updating to. Horrible - thats PTC terror in its purest form. If I would be in that situation and aware of the procedure, I don't think I would be willing to give the new version a try (and without testing it with older worksheets it wouldn't make much sense for many people).

At least a well placed warning would be appropriate and of coures I would expect Prime3 to be able to read AND write the older format without the help of a separatly installed MC15.

[RichardJ]

All true. The current licensing for Mathcad is the most onerous and unpleasant of any software package I have ever owned. By far.

[Efried]

Dear Richard,

many thanks for that pointer. very interesting that my points do not appear in the findings... May be I have to return into the learning phase, so I was

starting Help- searching for a list of programming operators: negative - searching for "trace" negative - searching for debugging negative -consulting the video of the mathcad academy - negative...

Finally http://plasma.colorado.edu/mathcad/Mathcad_Prime_Migration_Guide.pdf revealed the inconvenient truth, prime has only a subset of Mathcad programming statements.

I think this Prime is a big fail so far for code developpers, since it contains no debugging.

[Werner_E]

Efried schrieb:

Dear Richard,

Werner 😉

Finally http://plasma.colorado.edu/mathcad/Mathcad_Prime_Migration_Guide.pdf revealed the inconvenient truth, prime has only a subset of Mathcad programming statements.

Thats a sad fact. BTW, you have access to the migration guide (and other ducuments) from within Prime. Go to ribbon "Erste Schritte"/"Migrationshandbuch". The documents should have been installed during installation of Prime2.

[Efried]

Hi,

thanks for the continued support.

that lacking trace command makes me a lot of work. Is there something with variable argument list with PRIME?

covering all that and more:

trace(text)

trace(text, var1)

trace(text, var1, var2)

could look like

trace()=0

thanks a lot

then I could easily baypass this problem

[Werner_E]

I'm not aware of anything like that. But then, I'm not that experienced with Prime as I successfully try to avoid using it whenever possible - that is most always with exception of answering some questions here in the forum when the poster provides a sheet in Prime format. As already said - Prime is a heavily unfinished product which IMHO never should have been named version 1 or even version 2. And whenever PTC adds some few of the feature Mathcad had since ages they try to make it a hype as if they innovated something new. So announcements like

http://blogs.ptc.com/2013/03/05/exciting-things-to-come-ptc-mathcad-prime-3-0

really make me angry.

[Werner_E]

Maybe I misunderstood what your intent is.

Do you ask if its possible to write functions with a variable number of arguments? AFAIK the answer is no. Whenever I am in need for an optional parameter in a function I write I rsort to using vectors. Your program can easily check if the parameter is a scalar or a vector and if its the latter you can extract your additional parameters from there. Not that comfortable but at least a workaround.

But if you are really trying to write your own trace routine in Prime, where would you write the output to?

[RichardJ]

But if you are really trying to write your own trace routine in Prime, where would you write the output to?

Back in the real Mathcad, before we had the rather rudimentary debugger we have now, someone (Robert, I think) wrote an even more rudimentary debugger that wrote it's output to a textbox. Unfortunately, we don't have textboxes in Prime.

[Efried]

Hello Richard,

may be APPENDPRN used in a programm will work for tracing?

regards

[RichardJ]

Yes, that might work. I think you might get a big speed hit though, because it has to open the file every time. It would have to be called sparingly.

[Efried]

yes indeed, but "trace" also brought down the speed in original Mathcad. Writing away the intermediate results helps to keep memory demand low....

[RichardJ]

Writing stuff to the screen does slow things down, but I think not nearly as much as writing stuff to disk when every write operation requires the file be opened and closed.